Glasgow Conservatoire accused of ableism and transphobia

Of course it may be the case that this is a handful of attention-seeking whinyarses, and that the school in question has a good track record. I appreciate that some PP have personal experience of attending the place.
But I have some reservations about that article, having seen plenty of incidents of legitimate concerns being dismissed as 'woke snowflakes' or 'reverse discrimination'.
It at least looks like some of the complaints made by these students were to do with racism and general bullying, but emphasising ableism and transphobia in the headline is a little bit dog-whistly, suggesting 'spoilt brats with made-up problems'...

I know pussyhat , the female homosexuality bit cancels out everything above and means gulag status. I'll be in good company.

That letter reads as a concerted witch-hunt against the woman who set up the course.

What hateful entitled little children these people are.

"Saying this as a biracial, disabled lesbian (what does that make my acceptability score this week?)"

Sorry mate, but you're still at the bottom of the pile due to your boring old lesbian genital fetish and female privilege. Try harder.

They might have a point if they said all of the staff are XYZ, but to say the tutors are mostly “white, cis-gender, able-bodied and heterosexual” is exactly as you'd expect

I'm torn over the comment the tutor made about the student's abortion.

I think it depends on the context, in a conversation about how you could turn a personal experience into a piece of performance art and exploring ways to do it it could be a valid comment.

Also the difficulty of how long it takes for ice to melt, and how that would be different on a stage or if it was being performed outside in different weather.

Scapa even the locals can't agree how to pronounce Wemyss, outsiders have no hope.

To be frank as someone who, bar three years at university, has lived in the general vicinity of Glasgow my whole life I'm pretty sick of the whole lumping white people together as a homogenous mass. This is American cultural imperialism that completely ignores our own patterns of immigration and the ensuing ethnic tensions that result from them.

We have a long standing problem with anti Irish bigotry that causes far more real world problems than any other ethnic divide. These pampered brats aren't even acknowledging that. They know nothing of the history of Italian immigration. They don't care about the issues around the Roma population in Govanhill. They're just hanging off the coat tails of a completely different countries particular racial history and issues.

It's the 'students as customers' bind again, isn't it? Demanding their money back

Also there is incredible support at the uni for mental health and people with learning difficulties.

In my first term there I was diagnosed with dyslexia and the support I received was amazing. I had a dedicated learning support person who I met up with three times a term. My dyslexia was picked up on immediately after a life time of it being missed and me thinking I was just lazy.

I remember my support person telling me 1/6 students at the conservatior had a learning difficulty.

Never mind Torpenhow, Wemyss and Milngavie, Mockers

This makes me so sad. Dragging the reputation of this fantastic institution through the mud for woke points. 🤬

Two kids I know are attending the school and are thriving, precisely because it is so accepting, and yes, bonkers. Bonkers is pretty much what any performing arts school feels like, no matter how old the students. The Conservatoire has truly dedicated teachers and excellent teaching programmes and none of the complaints seem justified to me.

The story about the student who had an abortion seems more like a budding performer who thought she had a ground-breaking idea and got some honest critique from a teacher. In a creative setting that's what you need. I know it hurts, and how much when your tutor tells you this idea you're so in love with has been done to death, is dull, indulgent or too self-absorbed to work. But the public is a lot less patient than any tutor and I wouldn't be surprised if the tutor merely sought to protect her from further harm.

As for mis-pronouncing that Cantonese greeting. I've lived in the UK for 25 years. No one pronounces my name right. I meet lots of people who think it's funny to make disparaging jokes about my nationality. Depending on the setting, I respond with a joke of my own or a calm request to keep it professional. Because I've also experienced deliberate and inadvertent xenophobia, it's never ocurred to me to complain about mispronounciation, especially when someone makes an effort to use my own language to reach out to me. I can't get my head around that sense of entitlement.

As for "most staff members fit a white, cis-gender, able-bodied and heterosexual mould", I am getting sick of this nonsense.

For starters, "cis" isn't just an insult when thrown at women, performing arts people are typically less gender-conforming than the general public and that is a massive assumption purely based on teachers' outward appearance.

Diversity or better the underrepresentation of minorities is of course often an issue. But Scotland is majority white (97%) and straight (95%). So if most staff are white and straight, this is perfectly normal in a country with such a homogenous population. The school does have a lot of foreign staff btw, possibly beyond the percentage that would be representative of the country as a whole.

As for sexuality, I would actually bet money on it that homosexuals are overrepresented here compared to the wider population as this is typical of the performing arts. And the "able-bodied" part of that complaint is insidious. They're not actually talking about an underrepresentation of physical disabilities, they are talking about mental health issues. And it's incredibly insulting as again, those are overrepresented in the performing arts (for various reasons) and will be among staff.

My son was lucky enough to be taught by one of the foreign instrumentalists teaching there and some of the other staff I know by reputation and from their work and honestly, I'd have been honoured to be taught by them (if I had any relevant talents).

I hope someone at some point tells these kids to get a grip and toughen up. Otherwise they're not going to last long in this business.

Thank you for link. It's a bit tedious and wordy, isn't it?

First misgendering now mispronouncing???

The People of Kirkudbright, Llansanffraid and Happisburgh will not stand for it.

Saying this as a biracial, disabled lesbian (what does that make my acceptability score this week?) - being any of those things does not make a person more virtuous or better at a job than anyone else. Saying that there must be disabled providers for disabled students and gay service providers for gay students and so on - that's pretty exclusionary, separatist stuff, which does nothing whatever for helping disabled/BAME/homosexual people achieve what has been sought for over decades, which is to just be accepted as a normal part of the population and workforce, not standing out as special or different. The focus is the best person for the job.

The fact also stands that minorities are called that because they are minorities. There ain't that many of them about. The massive majority of the UK population is going to be straight, able bodied, white, non trans, the population bulge is for older people, this is representative of the population. You will never be able to staff any average service with a full complement of minority staff. The demonising of everyone outside those minorities is ridiculous.

I particularly enjoyed their demands including:

"For the academic board to grant mitigation in assessment processes to students involved in this complaints procedure, including but not limited to the exclusion of Prof. Richardson-Webb from issuing these students grades and feedback."

And

"Compensation to the ten students involved in the submitted complaint, including but not limited to the refund of tuition fees paid by students who are not supported by SAAS or other funding bodies and have paid / are required to pay tuition fees. Prof. Hodgart’s insistence that compensation cannot be offered because “the programme was delivered” is roundly fallacious in its refusal to acknolwedge how, as a result of the malpractice of Prof. Richardson-Webb and her staff team, the RCS has breached its contract to provide us with an adequate standard of tuition. We firmly maintain that the abuse suffered by us as students has had a severe negative impact on our learning and wellbeing, denying us the full opportunity to participate in the teaching offered"

The thing is, that as others have said it sounds as if there may be a grain of truth in some of the complainant, but these students have just made themselves sound ridiculous which means that everything they say will be dismissed out of hand.

“white, cis-gender, able-bodied and heterosexual”

As is the majority of the UK population. They need to get their heads out of their arses and into the real world.

"The students complained that they had yet to receive an apology for the “unpaid emotional labour” they expended in the complaint"

Self absorbed bullshit.

It says link may be broken or page removed on the link to the letter

Weird, it works ok for me

Hopefully the archived link works for you?

archive.li/2O135

It says link may be broken or page removed on the link to the letter...

Glasgow has a huge immigrant population and well documented problems associated but they're white so don't count.

None of my friends have shared that letter and I have over 200 alumni and staff of that course on my Facebook friendship list so that's saying a lot.

But the person in question isn't a white man.

Also there are trans people on the staff and it's more than half women.

Not many BAME people but probably more than proportion of how many are in Glasgow in general.

reanimated

I know the woman in question personally having spent 4 years doing the exact same course.

I don't believe for a second she's a bigot, not one second. I don't believe she'll have made sly digs about someone's ethnicity/religion/gender.
She's a strong character definitely but not a bigot or a bully.

I can't find this open letter though

This?

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2728437857207663&id=100001244253416 Archive (archive.li/2O135)

It was literally signed by 5 people ...

There's also this terribly persistent trope that white men are the most oppressed group ever, and their oppression is being escalated when anyone who is not white or not male suggests that something a white man said was untrue, or unfair, or broke the law. Think of that douche Jordan Petersen, who made his name by bellowing that he was happy to go to jail for the crime of insulting his students (when there had never been any suggestion that he would go to jail, even for blatant rudeness).
Think how many times efforts by arts/humanities students to get some diversity into the curriculum lead to this sort of panicky attack on 'political correctness' from the right wing press.